Metaphor and Metonymy, Jeannette Littlemore

Metaphor in everyday communication - Jeannette Littlemore

Why do metaphors work?

In the case of both metaphor and metonymy, we talk one thing in terms of another. However there is a difference between the two. Metaphor is an exchange of properties, while metonymy is an exchange of entities. Consider the following two sentences: (1) Kevin is bit of a monster (=scary, aggressive), (2) The White House (=government) announced new tax reforms. The first one is an example for metaphor, whereas the second one is an example for metonymy. 

Littlemore studies metaphor and metonymy in the following contexts:

1. cross-cultural communication; how metaphor and metonymy are used differently in different languages and cultures (emotions=heart/liver (Malaysia)); language learners (L2 speakers)
2. discourse communities
1. nursery - loose nappy(=for upset stomach0
2. sports - put him under Reese(=Reese’s coaching)
3. hospitals - room 121(=patient in the room 121)
4. military - 12 o’clock for direction, 
5. business - hedge funds, ring fencing, angel investor, unicorn, …
6. math and music education - high notes, low notes, thick notes, thin notes, ...
3. how people talk about their traumatic experience, difficult moments of life (sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, miscarriage, rape, accident, violence, loss of dear ones, depression, isolation, )
4. sexual health  - The objective was to use metaphor and wordplay to raise awareness on sexual health in indirect and humorous ways. e.g. going to touch wood; visit her spaghetti garden, exploring their botanical gardens, ...
5. advertising and branding -  Jaguar Cars (as sleek and fast as jaguars), Rolls Royce Phantom (as strong and powerful as the superman character Phantom), The Beast (as scary as a beast), 
6. gestures - they are useful in establishing cohesion in conversation by L1 speakers; to find the right words (esp. by L2 speakers); some are metaphorical and some are metonymic (roof gesture for house) and some are pragmatic; sign language; 
7. non-verbal communication -  metaphor and metonymy are common in verbal as well as non-verbal communication
1. the pair of glasses on the table for the teacher: metonymy because the teacher wears the glasses
2. handbag for Thatcher: metonymy because Thatcher used to have a handbag at public appearances
3. sickle for the working class: metonymy because farmers use sickle in harvesting crops; no transfer of properties
4. suit for the executive class: metonymy because corporate wear suits to meetings; no transfer of properties
5. thumbs up for good luck, V for victory: metonymy because it’s a convention
8. human-computer interaction - @MetaphorMagnet publishes metaphorical expressions generated by bots; how good are the metaphors (novelty, alliteration, Keats heursitic…)
9. embodied metaphor - metaphors that trigger physical, mental and emotional responses; interaction between metaphorical and the physical (e.g. importance ~ weight, similar ~ close); metaphoric associations such as LOVE is JOURNEY; e.g. I have had a rough day; I am trying to climb Mount Everest in flipflops.

Languages of the World

 Languages can be differentiated based on various aspects:

• Families - The languages having a common ancestor are grouped into language families.
  
  • Indo-Aryan (Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Haryanvi...)
  • Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Konkani, Tulu…)
  • Germanic (German, Dutch, English, Scots, Dutch…)
  • Slavic (Russian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Polish...)
  • Celtic (Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic…)
  • Romance (Italian, French, Spanish…)
  • Sino-Tibetan (Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, Tibetan, Burmese…)

•  Scripts - Different languages follow different scripts.

• Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati…)
• Latin (English, Spanish, German...)
• Arabic (Arabic, Persian, Urdu…)
• Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian…)

•  Inflection

• Analytic - few inflections e.g. English
• Isolation -  close to no inflections e.g. Mandarin
• Synthetic - many inflections
• Agglutinative - a single inflection conveys only a single grammatical category e.g. Finnish; English (goes → third person, am → first person), Malayalam
• Polysynthetic
• Fusional - a single inflection conveys multiple grammatical categories e.g. Italian future tense

Some Linguistics

Linguistics is the science of language. Language is the method of human communication, either spoken or written. Most of the languages around the world have more similarities among each other than dissimilarities. This leads to the concept of a universal grammar, which is the basis of all languages.

• Linguistics - study of language e.g. universal grammar, syntax, semantics
• Computational Linguistics (or NLP or Corpus Linguistics) - study of language through computational means with the help of machine-readable corpora; natural language processing e.g. automatic question-answering, text summary generator
• Cognitive Linguistics (CL, in short) - study of relation between language and cognitive processes e.g. child language acquisition
• Diachronic (or Historical) Linguistics - study of changes in language over time e.g. semantic drift
• Philology - study of language in historical texts
• Etymology - the study of origin of words
• Onomasiology - the branch of linguistics concerned with  the question “how to express the idea X as a word?”
• Semasiology - the branch of linguistics concerned with the question “what does the word X mean?”
• Sociolinguistics - study of language in respect to various social factors such as gender bias, social status, patterns of migration, influence of colonialism

 

Sociolinguistics - How do social factors affect language?

• Multilingual society
  
  • Code switching - switching from one language to another e.g Malayalam with wife, Marathi with shopkeeper, English with boss, Hindi with friends
• Code mixing - mix multiple languages e.g. Manglish, Hinglish
• Language shift - shift from language to another over a long period of time e.g. the common language shifted from Hindi to English in India

•  Based on variety of language:
• Accent - variation in pronunciation e.g. Malayalam accents (Trivandrum accent, Palakkad accent, Kochi accent, Thrissur accent, Kasargod accent)
• Dialect - variation in pronunciation and vocabulary e.g. Hindi dialects (Bundeli, Awadhi, Kannauji), English dialects (British, Australian, African-American, American, Indian)

• Based on use of language in a multilingual society: I think a language can have many dialects but only some of them are considered the standard and other become vernacular.
  
  • Standard - codified version of a language e.g. Standard English
  • Vernacular - languages that are not official, non-standard version of a language e.g. African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)
  • Lingua franca - e.g. English due to globalization, French by nobility, Latin by Catholic Church

• Based on official requirements:
  
  • National language - e.g India (Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Punjabi, Oriya, Bengali)
  • Official language - e.g. India (Hindi, English)

slang (informal), jargon (domain), pidgin (multilingual group), creole (second generation speakers), taboo (private)

Software Licensing

Types of Licences

1. Proprietary e.g. Microsoft Windowss
2. Copyleft (FOSS) - GNU General Public License, CC BY-SA e.g. Linux kernel, GCC
   2.a GNU LGPL e.g.
3. Permissive (FOSS) - BSD License, MIT License, Apache License, CC BY e.g. Apache Web Server
4. Public domain - WTFPL, CC0

If the conditions specified by the license are not met, then it results in copyright infringement.

Open source software vs. Free software

Free software focuses on the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve a software. Think of free speech and not free beer. Their enemy is proprietary software released by companies such as Microsoft and Apple.

Open source focuses on the effective collaborative of software development. Remember the Cathedral vs. Bazaar analogy.

The underlying idea between the two terms is different. A neutral term is FOSS or FLOSS. e.g. Linux kernel.

FOSS Licenses

Two types of FOSS licenses are copyleft (more restrictive) and permissive (less restrictive). Copyleft vs. Permissive

A copyleft license ensures that anyone who receives the binary version of the software is entitled to the source version (including any source modifications that went into any binaries they received), and that person, in turn, is also required to pass down the four freedoms to anyone else that they pass said binaries/code on to.

A non-copyleft FOSS license could allow one person to receive the four freedoms as part of obtaining a copy of the code, but then that person can choose whether they want to give the four freedoms (or any individual one of the freedoms) to someone else that they give the software to.

It's important to keep in mind that non-copyleft licenses can transform from being free/open source software to non-free, non-open source software licenses, because the enforcement of the preservation of the freedoms is not in place.

GNU GPL vs. GNU LGPL

GNU project has two licenses for its libraries. The important difference between the two is that using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs.

So when is LGPL useful? LGPL is useful especially when the library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other libraries. With LPGL, such free library's get more users.

So when should LGPL not be used? However if the library's features are not readily available elsewhere, then LGPL should not be used because it goes against the principles of free software. GPL should be used in this case because it leads to the development of more free software, and encourages free software movement.

Writing Scientific Articles

Steps in Paper Writing 

1. Pre-writing (content dump) - 70%
2. Writing - 10%
3. Revision (rewriting, formatting) - 20%

STYLE - The following tips are helpful to maintain a good style of writing.

1. Cut the clutter
1. Remove clunky words/phrases - important, as it is well know that, and it should be emphasized that
2. Remove hedge words - e.g. very and appreciable
3. Remove unnecessary jargons and acronyms. 
4. Remove repetitive words/phrases. 
5. Eliminate negatives. 
6. Omit needless prepositions - e.g. that
7. Use adverbs sparingly - e.g. really, basically, and generally
8. Shorten long words and phrases - e.g. due to the fact that to because
2. Use the active voice
3. Write with verbs - Use strong verbs. Don't turn verbs into nouns. Don't bury the main verb

Good Style, John Kirkman - A writer should aim for accuracy, clarity, readability and the right tone in scientific and technical writing.

1. Sentences - Sentences should be reasonably short and not too complex. In order to rearrange sentences, use compound sentence structures and complex sentence structures. 
2. Vocabulary 
1. In general, prefer short words to long words, ordinary words to grand words, familiar words to unfamiliar words, non-technical words to technical words and concrete words to abstract words.
2. Use jargons only if they are genuinely necessary.
3. Avoid fashionable words such as functionality, enhance (improve/increase?), parameter (value/variable?), peripheral, viable or inhibit (stop/reduce?) because they have become unreliable units of information exchange. 
3. Phrases 
1. Avoid roundabout phrasings that uses abstraction or nominalization. Avoid abstraction by being as being as specific as possible. Avoid nominalization, thereby getting rid of colorless verbs such as achieve, perform, accomplish, carry out, conduct, observe 
2. Avoid unusual phrasings that use words such as having and being
3. Avoid excessive use of adjectives as premodifiers. Usually, one or two adjectives, especially number adjectives and color adjectives, come before the noun, and other modifiers come after it. 
4. Avoid excessive use of nouns as premodifiers. Premodifying nouns are less explicit than postmodifying prepositional constructions. Confusion may also arise when nouns are used as premodifiers along with prepositions, transitive verbs, and to be and to become. The trick is to introduce the agent as soon as possible. 
4. Verbs 
1. Tense - Use past tense to state what the objectives were, what equipments were used and what procedures were used. Use present tense to state ‘eternal truths’ and in discussions of data or results. 
2. Voice - Use a proper mixture of active and passive voice. Use active voice as far as possible. Use passive voice only when the agent is unimportant, when the agent is not known, when we do not want to state who the agent is and while stating a generally-held belief. Improper use of passive voice can lead to distortion in meaning, roundabout phrasing and ambiguity. Active writing does not have to be personal. It may be desirable to ensure objectivity in scientific and technical writing, but not at the cost of clarity. Avoid it...that constructions. 
5. Punctuation
1. Use right punctuation at the right places. Punctuations are an integral part of written communication.
2. Add comma after discourse markers such as however, well, since, ... 
6. Tone - Avoid cheap attempts at producing user-friendly text that may come across to the reader as overly-patronizing. A comfortable, conversational user-friendly tone is best produced by use of simple vocabulary in direct address to the user.

How to Write a Great Scientific Paper (MSR Cambridge)

1. Don’t wait, just start writing - forces us to be clear and focused; open the way to initiate dialogue with others; a way to develop ideas, instead of an output medium 
2. Identify your key idea - a paper is an idea-conveying mechanism; the paper should have exactly one clear, sharp idea; “the main idea of this paper is...”, “in this section we present the main contributions of the paper.”  
3. Tell a story
1. narrative flow: (1) here is a problem, (2) it is an interesting problem, (3) it is an unsolved problem, (4) here is my idea, (5) my idea works, (6) here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches
2. structure: (1) title, (2) abstract, (3) introduction, (4) the problem, (5) my idea, (6) the details, (7) related work, (8) conclusions and future works 
4. Nail your contributions to the mast - first page of the paper is very important; describe the problem and state your contributions; use an example; idea vs. contribution; 
5. Related work - put it at the end of the paper; explain your idea first, along with details and then compare to existing work; acknowledge weaknesses in your approach; be generous to the competition; 
6. Put your readers first - use examples, figures well
7. Listen to your readers - internal review; experts and non-experts; use the guinea pigs carefully; “just put one mark where you get lost and then we’ll talk about it”;  

PARAGRAPHING

The three important elements of successful academic writing are punctuation, paragraphing and style. This post deals with structuring paragraphs.

Body Paragraph - The three important elements of successful paragraphs are shown below:

1. Unity - All sentences should focus on one main idea of the paragraph. Start the paragraph with the topic sentence. The topic sentence should contain the topic and the controlling idea. Ask the question words to come up with the controlling idea. If the paragraph is too long, then it is good to have a concluding sentence.
2. Coherence - All sentences should be clearly related to each other. Repeat key words. Use synonyms. Use pronouns. Use  transition words 
3. Development - All sentences should develop the one main idea. Use details and explanation. Use examples and evidence. Use references

TEE Rule - Topic Sentence, Explanation, Examples/Evidence

Introductory Paragraph - State the topic of assignment and comment on its importance. State the main argument. How you intend to answer the question?
Concluding Paragraph - Summarize the main points. State the main conclusion. Has the question been answered?

References

1. The Elements of Style 
2. Writing in the Sciences 
3. Writing Structured Paragraphs 

മലയാളഭാഷാ വ്യാകരണം || Malayalam Grammar Basics

Malayalam is a Dravidian language, spoken predominantly by about 38M inhabitants of Kerala in India, and the Malayalee diaspora around the world. The word order is subject-object-verb. Malayalam has  heavily been influenced by other languages such as Sanskrit (ref. Manipravalam) and Tamil. Malayalam is classified as an agglutinative (synthetic) language due to the predominant use of inflections to indicate grammatical relationships. Malayalam has its own script and the modern alphabet consists of more than 50 characters. The script evolved from Vattezhuthu (an ancient Tamil script) and Grantha script (used to write Sanskrit). Malayalam and Tigalari (of Tulu) are sister scripts.

The major linguistic elements in Malayalam are the following:

സന്ധി - സന്ധി defines the joining of letters . There are many ways to perform സന്ധി in Malayalam: (1) അദേശസന്ധി (മരം+കൾ=മരങ്ങൾ), (2) ലോപസന്ധി  (വനം+മേഖല =വനമേഖല), (3)ആഗമസന്ധി (ദയ+ഉള്ള=ദയ+യ്+ഉള്ള), (4) ദ്വിത്വസന്ധി (അര+പട്ട=അരപ്പട്ട), ... 

സമാസം - സമാസം deals with the joining of words. ഉദാ: തീ തുപ്പുന്ന വണ്ടി = തീവണ്ടി, അച്ഛൻ + അമ്മ = അച്ഛനമ്മമാർ. An example for word composition in English is: attendant during flight = flight attendant 

അലങ്കാരം - അലങ്കാരം deals with figures of speech ഉദാ: ഉപമ, ശ്ലേഷം. It is of two types: (1) ശബ്ദാലങ്കാരം, (2) അർത്ഥാലങ്കാരം 

വൃത്തം - വൃത്തം  deals with prosody. 

Nouns - Nouns are inflected for case and number. Nouns are not inflected for gender in Malayalam. The cases in  Malayalam are as follows:

1. Nominative (രാമൻ) - Nominative case always denote the subject of the sentence.
2. Accusative (രാമനെ)  - Accusative noun denotes the object of the sentence. In sentences where there is a nominative, accusative and dative noun, the nominative will be the subject, the accusative the direct object and the dative, the indirect object.
3. Sociative (രാമനോട്) - Sociative case is grammatically similar to accusative case, but semantically different. The  sociative nouns do not function in the role of experiencer but only as recipients.
4. Dative (രാമന്, മേരിക്ക്) - In sentences where there is no nominative noun, the dative functions as the subject. In sentences involving both nominative and dative nouns, the latter functions as the indirect object.
5. Instrumental (രാമനാൽ, വടികൊണ്ട്, വടിയിട്ട്)
6. Genitive (മേരിയുടെ, രാമന്റെ)
7. Locative (മുറിയിലേക്ക്, മുറിയിൽ, തണലത്തു, വെള്ളത്തിലൂടെ) - Locative case provides temporal and spatial meanings.
8. Vocative (രാമാ, രാധേ)

	Subject	Object
Nominative (e.g. രാമൻ_NOM)	+	-
Dative (സീതയെ_DAT)	+	+
Accusative (e.g. പുസ്തകം_ACC)	-	+
Sociative (e.g. രാമനോട്)	-	+

Examples: (1) Alice loves Bob. രാമൻ_NOM സീതയെ_DAT ഇഷ്ടപ്പെടുന്നു. (2) Alice gave the book to Bob. രാജു_NOM രാധയ്ക്ക്_DAT ആ പുസ്തകം_ACC കൊടുത്തു. 

Verbs - Morphology of verbs in Malayalam is complex due to the rich agglutination. Verbs are inflected for tense, aspect, mood and voice. There is no inflection for gender, person or number.

Past	ചെയ്തു (simple) ചെയ്തുകൊണ്ടിരുന്നു (continuous) ചെയ്യാറുണ്ടായിരുന്നു, ചെയ്തിരുന്നു (habitual) ചെയ്തിരുന്നു, ചെയ്തുകഴിഞ്ഞിരുന്നു (pluperfect)
resent	ചെയുന്നു (simple) ചെയ്തുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്നു (continuous) ചെയ്യാറുണ്ട് (habitual) ചെയ്തിരിക്കുന്നു, ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ട്  (perfect)
Future	ചെയ്യും (simple) ചെയ്തുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കും (continuous) ചെയ്തിരിക്കും, ചെയ്തുകാണും (perfect)
Mood (1) Indicative - ചെയുന്നു, ചെയ്തു, ... (2) Imperative - ചെയ്യണം, ചെയ്യ്, ...   (3) Interrogative - ചെയ്തോ, ചെയ്യാമോ, ചെയ്യുമോ, ... (4) Subjunctive - ചെയ്യുമായിരുന്നു, ചെയ്തേനെ, ചെയ്തിരുന്നെങ്കിൽ, … (5) Promissive - ചെയ്യും, ചെയ്തിരിക്കും (6) Possibility - ചെയ്യുമായിരിക്കും   (7) Ability - ചെയ്യാം (8) Obligation - ചെയ്യണം
Voice (1) Active - ചെയ്തു (2) Passive - ചെയ്യപ്പെട്ടു
(1) കേവലരൂപം - ചെയ്യുന്നു (2) പ്രയോജകരൂപം - ചെയ്യിക്കുന്നു

മലയാളം അക്ഷരമാല
സ്വരം, അനുസ്വാരം, വിസർഗം
വ്യഞ്ജനം, മധ്യമം
ചില്ല്
അനുനാസിക (ങ്ങ, ഞ, ന, ണ, മ) 

 

Further Reading

1. Malayalam-English Dictionary, Hermann Gundert, 1872
2. മലയാളഭാഷാവ്യാകരണം, Hermann Gundert, 1851
3. കേരളപാണിനീയം, AR Raja Raja Varma, 1896
4. The Essentials of Malayalam Grammar, L Garthwaite, 1903
5. ശബ്ദശോധിനി, AR Raja Raja Varma, 1918 (2nd ed. of കേരളപാണിനീയം)
6. Asher, R.E and Kumari, T.C. (1997) Malayalam, Routledge, London and New York.
7. A Grammar of Malayalam, PhD Thesis, RSS Nair, 2012
8. Malayalam Proverbs, Pilo Paul, 1902

General Election 2019: Some useful links

Performance of Incumbent MPs
 
National Election Watch

PRS Legislative Research